KEVIN COYNE : BERLIN 1981

1. Eastbourne Ladies
2. The Old Fashioned Love Song
3. Turpentine
4. The Death Of Ludwig Van Beethoven
5. I Don't Know What To Do
6. Dark Dance Hall
7. Day To Day
8. America
9. Stand Up
10. A Loving Hand

Label : no label

Venue : Internationales Congress Centrum (ICC), Berlin, Germany

Recording Date : September 3, 1981

Length : 59:06

Quality : FM recording (A+)

Review (The World Of Kevin Coyne) : Widely regarded as one of the earliest Kevin Coyne bootlegs in circulation, Berlin 1981 documents a radio broadcast recorded on September 3, 1981 at the Funkausstellung, held at the ICC in Berlin, where Coyne appeared as one of four acts on a bill topped by the ska band Bad Manners. For this show he was backed by former Soft Machine guitarist John Etheridge, alongside Steve Lamb on bass and Dave Sheen on drums, a lineup that gives the set a sharper, more electric edge than some of his other live recordings from the period. The set draws on familiar staples such as "Eastbourne Ladies," "The Old Fashioned Love Song" and "A Loving Hand," while "Turpentine" segues into a strange, half-improvised spoken interlude built around Coyne smoking on stage, listed here as "The Death Of Ludwig Van Beethoven." By most accounts this FM transmission preserves the show in full, in contrast to the tracklist changes said to distinguish it from a further vinyl edition of the recording. It was reportedly an unusually chaotic evening, with a boisterous crowd there mainly for Bad Manners, and Coyne is said to have dropped his trousers at one point mid-set. An encore is known to have followed but was never included in the broadcast, and by some accounts only Etheridge and Sheen returned to the stage for it, without Lamb. Rough around the edges as a document, the recording is still prized by collectors for the interplay between Coyne and Etheridge, a pairing that never quite got the same spotlight as his other backing bands of the era.